Can We Make Theological Sense of Suffering?​John Berkman, PhD, Professor of Moral Theology, University of Toronto; and Stanley Hauerwas, PhD, DD, Duke University Divinity School

In his well known work on suffering in theological perspective, Stanley Hauerwas has argued that we should not try to make sense of suffering, much less defend it or explain it. Rather, what Christians are called to do is to sit with the sufferer, and be a presence with the sufferer. In this approach, suffering is seen as a kind of surd, something inexplicable to us. But since we worship a God who suffered through humiliation and crucifixion, and is able to identify with our suffering, we are able to go in faith and hope.

In the lead paper in this session, John Berkman will first argue that suffering is the ultimate evil – for modernity. He will discuss three key elements of the rise of this perspective. First, the Baconian revolution where science is to be aimed at relieving the estate of humans, to ameliorate, or ideally, eliminate suffering. Second, the rise of utilitarian moral philosophy, which began as an admirable political movement to overcome appalling disparities in wealth and power in Britain, once confronted with its inability to articulate the good which is to be brought about, instead focuses on the alleviation of suffering as the ideal form of preference maximization, which seems to overcome its epistemological problems to its satisfaction, or at least quell its critics. Third, once suffering becomes the flip side of preference maximization, it becomes unclear what might constitute objective criteria for evaluating how suffering is to be relieved, apart from the amelioration of pain. But since suffering is the ultimate evil, is it even morally conceivable to suggest that at least some individuals or as a society, might not be not suffering as much as they think. As long as pain can be controlled, what constitutes suffering is radically subjective.

Second, he will contrast the modern preoccupation with the elimination of suffering with the classic Christian traditions location of suffering within the context of the trials of Christian life. Suffering is not the ultimate evil, but rather losing faith, hope, and love in the midst of suffering. While suffering is not to be sought, it is understood that no one can avoid suffering in life, and that it must be faced. This can be seen in figures such as Thomas Aquinas, who sees the response to suffering as one of the key tests for Christian faith, or in the Ars Moriendi tradition of learning to die well, which includes drawing on Christian virtues in response to suffering. ​Finally, he will put forward the argument that the Christian community must recover a robust account of suffering which squarely subordinates it with a theological perspective. Suffering can never be the ultimate evil, and only if it is put in a theological or analogous perspective, and we hope to come to an adequate understanding of it. Thus, Berkman will challenge Hauerwas to more adequately address perspectives in Scripture, and in Christian thinkers from Augustine to C.S. Lewis, on how to more fully locate the problem of suffering, surely not as a good in itself, but something out of which good may come. ​